How much does it cost to run a tank?

This is a discussion on How much does it cost to run a tank? within the Beginner Freshwater Aquarium forums, part of the Freshwater Fish and Aquariums category; -->
Hehe- I completely agree with you on both counts actually....

I've read many reports to the contrary. Coal contains detectable amounts of radioactive elements that become airborne during combustion. I've read several reports that indicate radiation exposure due to such airborne radioactive materials is considerably higher than the annual radiation exposure one would get from living in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant.

I'm an engineer at a coal fired powerplant and am in charge of nearly a gigawatt of power production.

Do coal power plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants. Yes. Is it because coal plants are hurling tons of radioactive material into the air every day? No. It's because nuclear plants are so extensively shielded that they emit virtually no detectable radiation. So what's greater than zero? Almost anything. Radiation in coal plants comes from naturally occurring uranium. The amount of uranium in coal is undetectable by any conventional means but it is there. Only a small portion of this uranium is actually radioactive. The radiation emitted in the flue gas stream is undetectable against the normal background radiation emitted by the earth itself.

Tyyr, that's true, but they can still measure the amount of radioactive material in the coal that goes in vs. what's left in the solid waste product and there's a measurable difference. The difference must have gone somewhere, and that somewhere is the flue gas stream.

I'm not trying to argue that there's some scary amount of radiation going on with coal-fired plants, but rather that the radiation fear that people have about nuclear power plants is unfounded because they're already receiving more radiation exposure from conventional plants than they would even living in close proximity to a nuclear plant.